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Monday, 1 September 2008
Syyskuu ja syksy
Where were we last year? Eden project, September 2007.
September (Syyskuu) has always been my favourite or at least a special month for various reasons, (okay, because of my birthday then); even with it's connotations of 'back-to-school' for us from UK. These days we often seem to go for short holidays with friends in (out of season) September. I like the occasional indian summer days, the autumn colours, the first rustle of leaves on the ground; the beginning of autumn (syksy) and the end of summer (kesä). Things always seem to start or end in September for me somehow, and now it will always be more poignant.
Today is another start: the first lesson here in my Finnish for Foreigners course.
I wonder how many mistakes are in that sentence...?
[corrected 23:06 01.09.08 by konna]
Sunday, 31 August 2008
Urheilu: It's not the winning that counts, it's beating Sweden...
shadow runner
Finns tend to love their sport - and not just wife-carrying, ski-jumping, and mölkky world championships either. Motorsport aside (which seems to produce an inordinate number of Finnish world champion rally and F1 drivers - that may have something to do with the empty gravel roads, and the 'survival of the fittest' rules for motorway driving here, but more on that another time) the main yardstick for success here seems to be 'did we do better than Sweden?', be it at ice hockey (most importantly) or even athletics at a pinch.
Don't bother to mention that UK got 19 olympic golds to Finland's 1 (shooting), they will only point out our 60+ million population against their 5 million; and that Sweden (pop. 9m) got none... actually maybe there should be some sort of handicapping system by size of population in the future... or at least add wife-carrying and mölkky as olympic sports.
So this Friday and Saturday was the annual Suomi / Ruotsi (Finland / Sweden) athletics match, and we were lucky enough to get free tickets for the Olympic stadium on Saturday (thanks Bore's boss!) to watch with 30,000 others various fit young things in blue and white try to run, jump and throw better than those in yellow and blue. Who won? Let's call it a draw...
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The evening also reminded me of trips to Crystal Palace athletics with my Dad & family in the 90's and the Grand Prix Finals in 2006; and with Sweden’s Carolina Klüft and Finland’s Sari Keskitalo reminding me of ex-speed skater Irina Privalova winning 100m & 400m, coming 2nd in 200m and competing in weak 4x100 & 4x400 teams for the winning rest-of-Europe team in '94 World Cup... I'm sure Dad would have loved to have seen this one too, especially with Helsinki's much more intimate layout, with the stands much closer the track; he always loved athletics having gone to White City as a youngster, and Rome olympics in 1960, and I have vivid memories of a summer holiday in Devon or Cornwall spent listening alternately to olympics results and Dire Straits on the car stereo. I wish I could be going with him to London 2012, but thats not to be; so for his memory, as well as some vestige of British pride, I hope Boris & co doesn't make too much of a hash of it.
Friday, 29 August 2008
Wool gathering
Not quite wool: Balls of string at a market
Came across this article in the weekly edition of the Gruniad. Obviously I haven't been here long enough to form more than a superficial opinion, but although it seems to ring true with what I have read, heard and experienced so far, but it also reinforces a lot of the 'Scandinavian' stereotypes that are around in the UK. Read the comments and you will see what I mean. As ever, any generalisation can be countered by a specific example or experience to the contrary - but our friends A&J in Germany, who have just had a bouncing baby boy, didn't feel the need to come rushing back before the birth... but that just opens up a whole other debate on another country.
Talking about babies, my brother (the middle one - let's call him Keski) has just found out that he (well his partner to be accurate) is expecting... somewhat to his and everyone's surprise. I'm not sure who had him in the sweepstake as to who would make our Mum a granny first, but he would have been the outsider not so long ago! This rounds out a whole bunch of changes between us siblings - youngest brother (let's call him Godzilla) finding a new GF; Lil' Sis moving in with Godzilla (maybe we should call her Gosberry now?); Keski's news... anyone would think they were trying to compete with us for attention!
Anyway at some point I will have to stop this displacement activity, do some work on my portfolio, and get my books together for language course starting Monday...
Thursday, 28 August 2008
August's Architecture Corner
Open House Helsinki is coming up on 2nd October and is part of the larger Helsinki Design Week (which has an equally cool logo). We'll be trying to take in some of the buildings on the list then, and no doubt, making a post or two, but as London's very own Open House is coming up on 20 & 21 September we'd like to hear what buildings you lot in London are planning to see - just add a comment here.
In the meantime we have been making our own visits, to Sibeliustalo Concert Hall, Lahti (see separate posts below) and also taking advantage of the tours organised by MFA (Museum of Finnish Architecture or Suomen Rakennustaiteen Museo in Helsinki - wonder why it's acronym isn't SRM? but I digress...) to accompany it's exhibition (and book) of "25 designs selected by a jury of experts ... presented in the third biennial of current Finnish architecture"; and the freebie tours on Artists Night to get inside the Finlandia concert hall.
I also found this blog by a Scottish Architect here in Finland since 2004 (see links on side bar) - so it's not just me then!
Sibeliustalo
Stalls from the gods
Back in July we visited the Sibelius Concert Hall (completed 2000, Architectural Design: Arkkitehtityöhuone Artto Palo Rossi Tikka Oy / Hannu Tikka ja Kimmo Lintulain) in Lahti, while on our way to Kesälahti mökki. For those who haven't heard of Jean Sibelius he occupies a position in Finnish music composition in much the same way as Alvar Aalto overshadows architecture. The building is really a composition of four parts (see the plans and more here ) with the refurbished carpentry factory being linked by the aptly named 'forest hall' foyer to the main auditorium 'box' and separate conference wing. The auditorium is an Artec acoustic design (like Birmingham), seemingly a timber box in a glass box, with large reverberation voids wrapping the intmate, hall. Interestingly you actually walk through the voids to get into the auditorium. Having worked on a few theatre/performance projects ourselves, it was particularly interesting to get a tour around the building and see (and hear) the amazing quality achieved here, particularly 10 years after the original competition was held.
As well as the lake and boats, you can also see the new and attractive Piano cafe through the massive glazing of the 'forest hall' - which we of course also had to try out too. Along with the new housing going up, the Sibelius Hall and Piano cafe are making this previously quiet corner of Lahti increasingly attractive and lively - which was part of the original reason for the project. As with so many projects like this it all hinged on politics, with the project being approved by just one vote by the city council; but now Lahti has a world class concert hall to honor a world class composer.
WeeGee
WeeGee Cafe terrace
WeeGee-talo (WG House) in Tapiola, Espoo is a fantastic set of art galleries and museums, brought together in the equally fantastic converted former Welin & Göös printing works. The original structure is for me the star of the show - in the main wing each of eight hollow concrete pylons support an independent 27 x 27 metre square of roof, like giant parasols over huge concrete table, and give huge areas of column free space on the upper floor.
Originally designed by Professor Aarno Ruusuvuori, the printing works was completed in the 1960s, and was heavily influenced by the 'serial approach, duplication and geometry typical of Constructivism'. As well as the structure, such innovations such as a ventilated double skinned, double glazed facade (with ingenious sliding inner skin to give access), and the glass washrooms (cue joke on glass ceilings...) led to the building being 'protected' (in effect listed) when production stopped in 1990. The €24m conversion, completed 2006, was carried out by Airas Architects, and respects the original features whilst integrating the huge volume of services, and varying needs of the 5 museums, art gallery and art school.
We were lucky enough to be shown around by the project architect Henna Helander as part of the MFA 06/07 series of tours, and got to see the EMMA (Espoo Museum of Modern Art) staff and conservation areas; the huge basement plant room (and stand in the main air duct); and find out why they went to the effort of excavating the basement for the main cloakroom area when there is nothing on that level (answer: because the black box auditorium that should have been there was omitted during the project).
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